The Sicatoka

Life is managing risk. We are past the risk of overwhelming ND hospitals. We now must manage the risk of losing some of them.

< hand in air > What exactly was that?

Strength of the Herd?

Any FBS game that does not happen for an FCS is just going to expand the economic damage.

The Hope Hustlers used a B-58 as a logo. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_B-58_Hustler It would’ve been so much better if the logo was someone decked out by ... http://leroymenswearseattle.com

This is a multi-factor, multi-dimensional problem, a classic MIMO system to the controls engineers out there. One-dimensional linear thinking will not get us out of this. If you want to say lock down, flatten, and protect health care infrastructures, and nothing else, you’re one dimensional. If you want to say open it all up and let ‘er buck, and nothing else, you’re one dimensional. Governor Bergum is thinking multi-dimensionally and he deserves credit for that. Will he make some mistakes on the way? Yes. But I’d rather that than him locked into “we’re doing this and only this” immovable one dimensional thought.

There’s a good explanation here under the heading “Deaths”. https://www.health.nd.gov/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/north-dakota-coronavirus-cases Media is reporting 25; only 16 registered as “COVID” with other listed as COVID as a secondary or contributing and some data pending.

CDC updated that chart to those numbers late last week. I suspect it has to with “COVID” versus “COVID-related” tracking (my hunch).

My niece (intern at a Boston area hospital) says 4 out of 5 do not come off the vent are the numbers they’ve seen.

I lost my mother to Alzheimer’s during this pandemic. I had a hospice exception to be with her in her care facility until she died. (And I believe those exceptions went away shortly after.) We lose 120,000 Americans annually to Alzheimer’s. And we know less about cause, prevention, and cure. You might catch this virus. It might kill you. If you have Alzheimer’s, it will kill you.

Herd immunity comes from exposing the herd. Band aid: fast or slow. While you decide I should let you know there’s another wound that needs tending.

Testing is a lagging indicator. It tells you what has happened, not what will. Before some say it ... All models are wrong; some are useful. Never forget that truism from a British statistician (Box). We still have my figurative band aid to pull off. Governor Burgum started pulling faster today.

The story of COVID-19 will be told by two words: dense populations Think about it ...

You can’t have mine. It’s the bench in the garage I use to put on work boots.

Give me a minute... I have to finish mainlining this bottle of Lysol.

The word in question is disinfectant. If someone says X and you interpret it to mean Y, it does not mean they said Y.

From m-w.com: disinfectant : an agent that frees from infection Penicillin is a disinfectant. And it’s given orally and intravenously.

I went through ORD the second week of January. Two weeks later to the day I was as ill as I’ve been in my adult life, not primarily pulmonary but some (you could see above normal usage and load on my CPAP data) but mainly GI, raging GI issues, for about 6 hours. Wiped me out for 36 hours. When I read some get hit by this virus in this manner I really really wish for an antibodies test. My CPAP physician, my GP, and I wonder what it really was. The only good part of that bad weekend? I was too sick to watch that Friday @Duluth game.

About my band aid analogy: I find when you go slow there comes a point where you look at what’s left and just rip it off because you understand the pain to this point. We’ve protected the medical infrastructure from an overwhelming fast blast; when do we just tear off what is left of the “band aid” to protect the rest of the economy and society. Remember: herd immunity requires the herd to be exposed. And I see herd immunity coming and being the solution long before a proven vaccine.

This is the classic band aid problem: Tear it off fast with high intensity for not long or tear it off slow with lower intensity for a longer time. Either way the band aid comes off. Here, the area under that flattened curve is the same: society is exposed and the herd immunity is built.

Did I hear 13 corona patients in ND hospitals is the present number? I wonder how many ICU beds in ND were in use a year ago today and why.

Picked up a Humpty and chips from a JL Beers last night. Total bliss.

Could Rieger play with that Smith or Johnson energy in the line up? That guy is what I don’t see in the roster right now.

The more I think about the defense, the more I'm intrigued. Effectively we're going to turn over 7 of 8 players between right now the start of 2021-2022. We have three open slots right now; we're sure to lose four a year from now (Bast, Kierstad, Rieger, and JBD as a junior-turn-pro); the last man standing will be Frisch. Come 2021-2022 the defense is going to Frisch (a junior!), the three guys brought in fall 2020 (assuming all stay for sophomore years), and four freshmen! This is where I start to wonder about Rieger taking on a "Casey Johnson" role and bringing in a fourth defenseman this fall (in case we have a one-and-done freshman in a year). Image the other: bring three this fall, one goes one-and-done, and have to bring in five freshmen defensemen in 2021-2022.

Are you anti-birdcage?